Decisions AUwA (Mature) 12/28/10 [WIP]

[greywolf]

Classes wouldn't start for a half hour and the school library sat empty...except for the one sophomore girl in the back study carrel with the book about human reproduction. She knew an awful lot about biology, even though she had just been in sophomore biology for about a month, but this particular aspect of it wasn't something she'd covered since sixth grade sex education, and back then the subject had been only theoretical. She hoped it still was, but the more she read the more that hope diminished.

• Are you pregnant? The proof is in the pregnancy test. But even before you miss a period, you may suspect — or hope — that you're pregnant.

'Yeah, right....like THAT was the case...'

• Consider these early symptoms of pregnancy, which may begin in the first few weeks after conception.
  
  Tender, swollen breasts
  Your breasts may provide one of the first symptoms of pregnancy. As early as two weeks after conception, hormonal changes may make your breasts tender, tingly or sore. Or your breasts may feel fuller and heavier.

'That...I've got...'

• Fatigue
  Fatigue also ranks high among early symptoms of pregnancy. During early pregnancy, levels of the hormone progesterone soar. In high enough doses, progesterone can put you to sleep. At the same time, lower blood sugar levels, lower blood pressure and increased blood production may team up to sap your energy.

'That too...'

Her teeth suddenly were nibbling on her lower lip, and she fought hard to control that, looking around the library to see if anyone had noticed her. Fortunately, the room was still empty.

• Slight bleeding or cramping
  For some women, a small amount of spotting or vaginal bleeding is one of the first symptoms of pregnancy. Known as implantation bleeding, it happens when the fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus — about 10 to 14 days after fertilization. This type of bleeding is usually a bit earlier, spottier and lighter in color than a normal period and doesn't last as long.

'Ten to fourteen days after fertilization.....FERTILIZATION...' The word seemed to beat upon her brain like a hammer. She knew the word...it was commonly used in biology, but before today she'd never really felt the...the impact of it.

• Some women also experience abdominal cramping early in pregnancy. These cramps are similar to menstrual cramps.
  
  Nausea with or without vomiting
  Morning sickness, which can strike at any time of the day or night, is one of the classic symptoms of pregnancy. For some women, the queasiness begins as early as two weeks after conception.
  
  Nausea seems to stem at least in part from rapidly rising levels of estrogen, which causes the stomach to empty more slowly. Pregnant women also have a heightened sense of smell, so various odors — such as foods cooking, perfume or cigarette smoke — may cause waves of nausea in early pregnancy.
  
  Food aversions or cravings
  When you're pregnant, you might find yourself turning up your nose at certain foods, such as coffee or fried foods. Food cravings are common, too. Like most other symptoms of pregnancy, these food preferences can be chalked up to hormonal changes — especially in the first trimester, when hormone changes are the most dramatic.

She closed the book and closed her eyes, blinking away the tears.
'This can't be happening,' she tried to tell herself, but even as she put the book back on the shelf she knew she had to find out for sure. She went to the reference desk and found the phonebook and got the telephone number for Chaves County Reproductive Services, the local planned parenthood clinic. She'd try to call them before class...see if she could get an appointment for this afternoon after school.

'This can't be happening...' she tried to tell herself again, as she left the library.

[greywolf]

She got through the school day...somehow. She actually didn't remember much of it, lost in a cocoon of her own thoughts as she went through the motion of going from class to class. And if it had been anyone else, chances are they would have noticed, but if her teachers noticed the absence of her raised hand responding to questions, they were probably just as glad, since it gave them a chance to question other students who weren't eternally and inevitably prepared like the 'perfect Miss Parker.' Her fellow students really hadn't noticed either, those who were prepared actually getting a chance to demonstrate their knowledge without having to compete with her and even those who were not prepared could hardly fault Liz for not intercepting questions they couldn't answer, for they certainly had been saved from that by her often enough in the past. So six periods had gone by when she'd been alone in her own thoughts...and even at lunch she'd sat by herself, since Maria was auditioning for the lead in the Fall school musical.

By 3:20 she was walking down the street to enter the clinic where she had her appointment. Chaves county planned parenthood made it easy for girls to get pregnancy tests...she'd merely had to talk to the receptionist in the little cubical beside the reception desk, and she'd been given a lab slip and the paperwork. Getting the results, the clinic made a little more difficult. The clinic had learned from long experience that the results of thye tests were not necessarily the happiest occasion, and so while the lab did the test the client filled out their medical history and got prepared to see the nurse practitioner who would give them the actual results, and assist them with emotionally coping with those results if necessary.

It was 3:40 when her name was called and she was instructed to go to office number three. The nurse practitioner met her at the door.

"Hello, Ms. Parker. I'm Linda Huntington...just call me Linda. Do you mind if I call you Liz?"

"Yes...I mean, no....I mean...go ahead and call me Liz."

"Well have a seat, Liz,...and let's talk."

Liz sat down on the chair in front of the desk, looking at the diplomas on the wall....a bachelor's degree from Cornell in Nursing, then a master's degree in nursing and a certificate to practice as a licensed nurse practitioner...visible symbols of how this woman had worked to make her dreams come true. Somehow the distraction helped, as Liz looked with growing apprehension at the folded manila envelope in front of her, the one labeled Parker, E.

Linda took the forms that Liz had filled out, and went over them briefly before looking up with a thin smile and a face displaying a little bit of concern.

"Well Liz, your pregnancy test is positive," she said looking up at the young girl whose eyes had just widened. "I would assume from the expression that wasn't really the result you wanted?"

Her lips seemed numb...numb as the rest of her...but somehow she got the words through them..."No....no, not exactly."

"I take it this wasn't exactly a planned pregnancy?"

Liz could only shake her head wordlessly.

"I see that you are only sixteen, Liz. I'm not sure if you were aware that the age of consent in this state is seventeen....although the law doesn't really call it rape if it was consensual and the boy was no more than four years older, unless force was used...."

"There was no force...I was drunk and....," Liz found herself unable to continue.

"If you were drunk, you lacked the ability to legally consent, Liz, which would make it rape...."

And Liz knew in her heart that it was rape...just as much rape as any that had ever happened, but she couldn't face talking to the detectives...talking to Kyle's father...about what had happened that night...so she lied...or at least concealed the truth."

"I wasn't that drunk...I knew what was happening.....I could have stopped it...."

"Well Liz," said Linda, "..you have a number of options. The pregnancy can be terminated.....and if that's your desire, it is best if it be done in the first twelve weeks. After that it's a much more involved procedure, and we probably couldn't do it in Roswell. How far along are you, do you think?"

"Six weeks and three days..."

"So you believe you know the day you conceived exactly?"

"I've only ...had sex...once. It would have had to have been then...."

Linda Huntington had heard a lot of stories in her business, but as she looked at the young girl before her, she wasn't quite sure she believed it.

"I'd like to have you see a counselor today...just to make sure you are going to deal with this OK. Nobody needs to know...not even your parents."

"Yes they will...I've got to tell them...I promised them I'd consult them before I made any more adult decisions...and I guess this is one."

"Yes," said Linda, suddenly sure the girl had been telling the truth. "It is indeed. We have some time then, I'll schedule an appointment for you in a week, once you've had time to talk it over with them and decide what you are going to do...."

[greywolf]

Pamela Troy clanged her car into the bumper of the one in back of her and winced. She wasn't that good at this parallel parking stuff, she'd managed to pass her driving test on the second try, despite almost hitting a lamp post trying to parallel park.

But she wanted to hurry, because she was going to be late for her appointment. She had developed the chlamydia infection about two weeks ago...she wasn't altogether sure who she had gotten it from. Her usual boyfriend was Bubba Brigham, but it hadn't been him. He'd been out of commission for about three weeks before that, and she'd partied with a few other guys during that time. Not that she hadn't blamed him though...he'd had to undergo treatment as well since they'd partied a week ago, but Pamela didn't feel particularly guilty about that. It wasn't like Bubba hadn't given her an infection or two over the last 10 months when they'd been sort of going together.

Pamela was surprised to see Liz Parker leaving the clinic. Most of the girls who went there did so to get birth control pills...or STD treatment, but she could scarcely believe 'the perfect Miss Parker' would have needed either. She shrugged her shoulders as she watched Liz walk down the sidewalk and turn the corner. 'Maybe Valenti is gonna get lucky,' she thought, '...or more likely, she'd just going to do a report for biology on chlamydia or something...' Pam Troy was becoming somewhat of a chlamydia expert herself.

Pamela went in to her appointment and had her repeat culture. The nurse practitioner handed the culture tubes to her along with a lab slip and told her to take them both to the lab.



It wasn't that the lab tech didn't like Jennifer Smith...she was a nice enough person. It was just that she was a fainter. Every lab had a few of them...people who would pass out when their blood was being drawn. The easiest thing to do was to take their blood on the exam table rather than in the chair, but the nurse practitioner had been running behind schedule, and had sent Jennifer straight to the lab. The tech shook her head sadly and got the smelling salts ready, then she made the venipuncture and watched as Jennifer's eyes had rolled back in her head.

The excitement was almost over by the time Pamela got to the lab. It was apparent that the woman had only fainted, but there were two nurses standing by, and the lab technician was adamant.

"As long as you're down there anyway, let's get your blood specimen BEFORE you get up." She reached for the blood tubes and painted the inside of the woman's elbow with some reddish disinfectant.

Pamela cleared her throat several times, impatient to get on with this, and the lab tech looked up at her with obvious irritation...

"Just leave the culture tubes and the lab slip up on the lab counter. I'll get to them when I get done with this."

Pamela went back to the lab counter and sat the specimen tubes and paperwork on the desk, but as she did so her eyes went to the clipboard sitting there...the one labeled pregnancy tests...and saw the bottom entry; Parker, Elizabeth POS.

'The perfect Miss Parker has a bun in the oven?' Pam stifled her laugh, not wanting the lab tech to notice. But she was grinning as she left the building. 'So little miss proper is no more proper than anyone else...and too stupid to even use protection. Wait until the girls hear THIS on Monday.'

With only a slight scrape against the fender of the car in front of her, Pamela Troy was on her way back home to get ready for her date with Bubba.

[greywolf]

She lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling of her room, the tears still trickling down her cheeks. Telling them had been the second worst experience of her life...almost as bad as what had happened the night of the party. Her cheeks still burned with the shame of it...the shame of causing them that much pain, and she actually was sure it WOULD have been better if they had treated her like a little girl...or screamed at her...or punished her...or something. But despite the pain she'd seen in their faces when she'd told them, they'd kept their word...treated her as an adult. The behavior that had led to her being pregnant had occurred on the other side of that 'line in the sand' they had drawn....'Was that really only yesterday?'...and they were continuing to play by the new rules...still supportive...still loving...but forcing her to make her own decisions. Oh, there had been a few tough spots....things she would always remember...all of her life....

• She'd waited until after dinner when none of them had been encumbered by distractions...she'd have the whole weekend to do her homework. She'd told them she had some news, and that there was no easy way to break it to them...that she was pregnant...and she'd waited for the screaming. Her father had instantly suggested that perhaps Kyle needed to be in on this discussion and her face had gone even further red with shame when she'd had to tell him that it really didn't involve Kyle....that it was someone else. Then he'd asked if she was...forced. She'd told him that they both had been drinking...that things had somehow just ...gone too far. He'd still had the protective look of a father who was sure that his daughter had been wronged, insisting that the boy who had taken advantage of her needed to be punished...if only to protect others, when she'd said the words.... "We were both drunk, Daddy, but.....well...I was the one that sort of started things off...and then...then somehow...."
  
  It had been all she could say, when she saw the look of pain the words had caused him and caused her mother...and she'd sat there with her lips moving...her mouth and tongue trying to form words, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. But there were no words...no excuses...no justification for how she'd failed them...how badly she'd strayed from how they had taught her, and she thought she'd go insane sitting there with her lips quivering and no words coming out...until they'd both moved to her side, holding her...hugging her...all three of them in tears, but both of her parents doing everything they could to let her know that she'd always be their little girl, and always be loved, no matter what sort of mistakes she made.
  
  When they had finally separated, there were still some tears trickling down all of their cheeks, but she'd watch her parents as they'd told her...still holding each others hands for their own support...that she was still responsible for her decisions, and now she had some very serious decisions to consider. They had offered to help her...as much as they could...or as little as she wanted...but the final decisions would have to be hers.
  
  She'd talked about what Linda Huntington had said...that they still had almost six weeks before it would become more difficult to do an abortion...and she'd seen her mother wince at the word. Grandma Claudia had told her how hard her parents had tried to have children. It had to be hard for the woman who had gone through 6 months of fertility drugs and six months of sex by the calendar just to conceive her...and who had never been able to conceive again to see her own daughter talk about discarding a baby like it was simply something to take out to the trash. Hard for her mom to even imagine that in three or four minutes of stupidity she'd made a baby....something her mother had tried for years to do without success. Except it wasn't a baby...Linda Huntington had made that plain. It was just a six week fetus...not even human yet....just some piece of tissue with eyes too big for its head and a head too big for its body...no more really human than the alien figures painted on the interior walls of the Crashdown downstairs.
  
  But somehow it just didn't feel that way to Liz. She knew it was growing in her body...just a parasite really...and the smart thing to do was just to get rid of it...quickly, while it was still easy...before anyone else even knew. She didn't want it..had never even considered......and certainly its father would want nothing to do with it....but still. The problem was that she did think of it as a human baby...or if not that at least life...life that was....innocent. Liz knew that she wasn't innocent...not any more...that her drunken taunting...her making the initial advances...that had been what had led to this. And there was at least some justice in her being punished...she'd made the decisions that had led to this sorry state of affairs. But the baby ...and that's how she found herself thinking of it...was still innocent, even if she was not, and for the baby to die for Liz Parker's mistakes....well where was the justice in that?
  
  She'd talked with her parents for hours, and they'd made her look at every possible option...abortion, maybe going to Florida to have the baby and putting it up for adoption...even keeping it....and they'd helped her with discussions of the pros and cons of each option. It hadn't been easy...hadn't been easy on any of them...and in the end, she still hadn't made up her mind. But the fact that they said they'd support her no matter what meant more to her than they would ever know. If she kept it, she knew, it would be terribly difficult to ever realize her dream of going to Harvard and that was hard to give up, since she'd already had to give up on the only dream that had ever been more important to her than that one...a life with Max. So no decision so far...but she still had five more weeks.

She stared at the ceiling, the tears eventually slowing. She was an adult now...an adult with two parents who loved her more than she ever thought possible. She could get through this...she WOULD get through this....somehow. She tried her best to sleep...rest would help...perhaps she could decide in the morning....

[greywolf]

It was 4AM, and Liz had yet to get to sleep, her mind trying to decide...trying to make one of those adult decisions...trying to decide where she should go from here. And laying in the darkness she knew she had no good options, and she couldn't really believe she had somehow gotten herself in this fix. But she had...she remembered the moment she'd known her life had gone completely to Hell, and it would never be quite right again....

She had felt his contempt..his loathing, even as he had pushed himself off her body...pulled himself out of her body, leaving her there on the mat with her legs spread wide, in a puddle of fluids from their coupling... and she knew even then that she'd lost something precious...something that she would never get back. She felt the pain of that loss, just like she felt the contempt and disgust that radiated from him as he backed away from her. It hadn't started out that way, and she hadn't wanted it to happen...she'd only been trying to help a friend, not destroy her life, but that certainly was what had happened.

• "Liz, if those three can do it, I can too."
  
  Liz was starting to get pissed. She'd just been groped by Bubba Brigham, gotten away from him, and come down to warn Kyle that Bubba had said Kyle would never be able to finish the drink he made...but Kyle was refusing to listen.
  
  'Duh...he's drunk,' Liz told herself, '..not that you are precisely sober yourself.' But still, she had to convince him...somehow. And if she'd been sober herself, she might have just called the cops, but Kyle was her friend and she didn't want to get him in trouble. If only she knew just how much alcohol was in the drink, even now she might reason with him.
  
  She went back in the kitchen to try to find the pitcher that Bubba had used to mix the gatorade, and found something even better. The extra liter bottle of gatorade that was prepared...in case someone vomited early in the half hour, but still wanted to pass the initiation by drinking a full bottle. There was no one else around, and she grabbed it as she went out the back door.
  
  She drove with the windows down in the Mustang, hoping it would keep her alert. But she only had a block to go before she pulled in to the parking lot of the high school. She pounded on the outside doors to the lab room...required by the fire code for any building where Bunsen burners and reagents sat on the lab benchs, hoping he was still here to open the door. Despite the pain being near him caused her, she was happy when the door opened. She'd been sure he'd be there...getting ready for the demonstrations for the kids tomorrow...the demonstrations she had refused to help him with, she thought sadly.
  
  "Liz...what are you doing here?" Max asked.
  
  "Max...I need to use the lab...I need to analyze something," she said as she poured the gatorade into a couple of centrifuge tubes and turned on the centrifuge to get the pieces of fruit pulp to the bottom while she turned on the venerable old Spectronic 20 to warm it up.
  
  The Spectronic 20 was a spectrophotometer and while old and primitive, it was very versatile. She could react Cerium ions with the alcohol and produce a colored product, and once you zeroed the machine with a blank cuvette from unreacted fluid, the absorption of the cerium-alcohol solution was directly proportional to the concentration of the solution, and she could have the answer in little more than twenty minutes...before Kyle started to drink the stuff. Then she would have ammunition to talk him out of drinking it. Or at least, she could if she could get her damn hands to work right.
  
  "What's going on, Liz...?'"he said, watching her fumble with the pipette bulb in an uncoordinated fashion. He'd seen her use the equipment dozens of times...but never as clumsily as this. He watched in disbelief as she tossed the pipette bulb aside and started to mouth pipette the sample...right under the sign that said not to... This wasn't making much sense to him...not any of it.
  
  "You shouldn't mouth pipette,Liz..., If that's hazardous, you could hurt yourself." it was the only thing he could think to say. And she wasn't even doing that very well...she seemed to be having trouble keeping the right level of the pipette.
  
  "Yeah, well Kyle Valenti is about to drink a liter of the stuff, so I guess I'll just have to take my chances. But don't YOU worry, you don't have to get...close...to me while I do it." She knew she shouldn't have said the last part of that...even while she was saying it, but she'd had the dream since third grade, and dreams like that die hard, and leave a lot of pain behind. Besides, she was drunk.
  
  "Give me that...before you hurt yourself," he said, grabbing the pipette away from her. "Why are you acting like this?" he said, as he started to mouth pipette the liquid himself.
  
  "Because I'm drunk, Max..."
  
  His eyes came up to hers in surprise and as he did the pipette broke the surface of the water and 25 ml of the solution hit him squarely in the back of the throat. He swallowed quickly and said, "You're drunk? Liz, you DROVE here....you can't be doing that when you've been drinking...and you shouldn't be drinking at all."
  
  And she knew he was right, but she was drunk, and hurt, and she'd given him a chance to be part of her life...to be part of the dream she'd had for the two of them...and he'd walked away from that. He finished pipetting and put the cuvette in the machine to incubate. In fifteen minutes they'd know how much alcohol the stuff contained...and if he'd just shut his mouth..not tried to lecture her...it might have all been different.
  
  "You've got no business driving if you've been drinking, Liz. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Give me the keys, Liz..."
  
  "You've got no business giving me orders, Max. You had a chance to be part of my life...now the hell with you!"
  
  He struggled to grab her keys away and she took the open liter bottle of cold gatorade and splashed him in the face with it and she'backed away as he coughed and choked and swallowed...until he'd slumped to the floor.
  
  "Max? Max...?" She'd gone to his side and turned him over...and he'd giggled in her face. "Goddamit Max, that isn't funny."
  
  He continued to chuckle, then sat up with a dazed look. "I'm hot," he said.
  
  "Max...this isn't funny...nobody gets drunk in fifteen seconds...I don't care how damn different you are..."
  
  But the words had no effect on him, and there was no life in his eyes as he got up and walked out the door to the hallway...saying, "I've got to cool down."
  
  Liz didn't believe it...the contents of the sports bottle had been icy...if anything he should have been freezing...and it was just impossible for anyone to get intoxicated in fifteen seconds...even drunk she knew that...'Unless maybe Bubba put drugs in there too,' the voice in her head brought up...
  
  "Oh God....Max...Max...where are you....?"
  
  She followed him by the trail of shed apparel...right to the boy's locker room. 'What the Hell,' she thought, it was a weird damn night and was apparently getting even weirder. She walked through the doors and saw him in the shower...almost an exact reversal of the fantasy she'd had for so long.
  
  She was stunned by the sight of him naked in the shower. Sure she'd fantasized....but the guy was an Adonis...or at least it seemed so to a fairly intoxicated Liz Parker. She admired him for long minutes...unable to move...while the passion that had been aroused in her earlier seemed to take hold of her...at least until she noticed him shivering.
  
  The water was icy and he'd been standing in it for minutes and he was shaking with the cold. She grabbed a towel and pulled him from the shower, toweling him briskly to dry him off..but unable to avoid...no unwilling to avoid looking at what she was toweling off. She wasn't sure if it was the alcohol but suddenly she too seemed on fire.
  
  Max's eyes still held no life, but his body shook with hypothermia as he wandered out the locker room to collapse onto the tumbling mat in the empty gymnasium. She watched him shiver...goosebumps covering that incredible body, and she felt herself get even warmer. Perhaps it was her old Red Cross First Aid survival training talking to her...or perhaps just the passion..or maybe just the booze, but all she could think of was shared body heat would warm him up and perhaps cool her down. She shed her clothes and sprawled out on top of him on the mat, not really sure just what she intended...at least not at first.
  
  Liz's mind wasn't actually operating at her normal level of cognition, but even fairly drunk it was apparent to her that whatever her closeness was doing to Max, it was NOT cooling her off any. And then she saw what her proximity WAS doing to Max...not to his level of consciousness...his eyes were still staring out in an unseeing sort of trance, but nonetheless a key part of his anatomy was definitely responding to her.
  
  And maybe if she hadn't been drunk...if she hadn't had a summer of despair...if she hadn't fantasized a fantasy very much like what was happening a hundred times...maybe she would have done something else. But what she did do was lay down on his chest straddling him...and take her right hand and guide him toward her entrance.
  
  In the fantasy she'd had there had always been pain...not that she'd minded..it was part of the gift of herself she'd give him, and there was a second of pain...but less than she'd thought..almost as if the tear had healed instantly. She knew it was wrong...knew she had no right to do this to him, even as she rolled to her side pulling him on top of her...still sheathing him within her. And then suddenly his body had started to respond...just his body..his eyes still held the vacant stare. She'd closed her own eyes and lifted her hips to meet his thrusts...twice...three times...and then when he'd exploded inside of her she'd known a pleasure so intense it was almost pain...a pleasure that did become pain when she opened her eyes and saw the horror in his face...the disgust...the loathing for how she'd used him. It was like there was a mental connection between them and she could feel the waves of disgust that were sweeping through him. As he'd pulled himself off of her she'd started to cry...quickly gathering her clothes and running back to the laboratory...continuing to cry until she saw the reading on the spectrophotometer.
  
  'It's 52% alcohol....it'll KILL Kyle.'
  
  There was no sense trying to talk to Max....she'd seen the look on his face when he'd found out how she'd used him...but Kyle...Kyle might die if she didn't get to him.
  
  She raced back to the house and went in to the living room. Kyle was almost passed out, and the other two were looking kind of woozy. She grabbed him and struggled to coax, cajole, and drag him to the car. One senior tried to interfere, but a knee to the groin sent him down out of the way.
  
  "This has been a real shitty night," Liz warned the other seniors, "...so you bastards stay out of my way."
  
  In five more minutes she was speeding toward the Emergency Room with an unconscious Kyle in the passenger seat.

As she thought of Max....remembering him turning away with contempt and disgust and loathing, she knew that there was no excuse for what she had done...for how she'd used him. She deserved his contempt and disgust...and she deserved to lose that which had meant the most to her in her life...his friendship, and the hope it would someday become something more. But even deserving it, didn't make the loss any easier to bear.

But she had lost it...that she was sure of.... and maybe that's what decided her. She would move to Florida...live with her aunt...bear their child and keep it... He'd never have to know...know that she would have at least this part of him. At least she'd have that much of her dream.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was 4AM and he lay on his bed, tears coming down his eyes....remembering that night.

At least as much as he could remember. She'd come to him...needing his help....she'd been drinking, and he was pretty sure he'd had some too. They'd argued .... argued about being a couple he thought, although in truth he didn't remember it. But he'd remember always as his mind had cleared...finding himself on top of her...inside of her. He could have stopped, even then, but it had seemed like just another dream...another fantasy until he'd exploded inside her...nothing in his dreams had EVER been quite like that. He fought back the anguished tears as he felt the shame again...

'You raped her, Max....raped Liz.....'

The thought alone nearly gagged him. Maybe he had been drunk, but that was certainly no excuse. He hadn't been able to face her since that day...and she hadn't faced him. He was surprised she hadn't had him arrested, for he knew he certainly deserved it.

For ten years he'd lived in Roswell, where every tourist trap had pictures of alien monsters, and every picture he'd seen of some evil beast from outer space had caused him pain, knowing THAT was what the humans really thought of this kind,...'But they were right,' he told himself. 'You ARE a monster, Max. Only a monster could hurt Liz that way...'

He watched the ceiling for another three hours, the tears creeping past his face to soak into his pillow. When sunrise finally came, it would start yet another day. And tonight would be another night when his tortured mind would still allow him no sleep.

[greywolf]

It was 7:30 on a Saturday morning and she'd been up for almost an hour already worrying about her son. But as she walked up to the closed door to his room she listened....and her tears started again as she heard the music....

• All your life is such a shame
  All your love is just a dream
  Open up your eyes
  You can see the flames
  of your wasted life
  You should be ashamed

Diane shook her head...wishing she'd never heard that terrible song...wishing that somehow the last four months hadn't ever happened.

She had been terrified that first year they'd had him...terrified that any day he might just run off.....might decide that he just didn't want to be their son, but as she looked back...'God, I think he was happier back then....even before he could speak.'

Diane had no real doubt that he'd sleep in for the next two hours....oh probably not sleep really, just lay on his back and stare at the ceiling of the room while he played that damn album....but she'd had it....had it up to her ears. Philip had left a half hour ago to meet a client about a problem with the man's mother's estate, and Diane Evans was NOT going to stay here and listen to that damn music yet another morning. As she moved by the other door she heard movement inside and rapped sharply on the door. her daughter opened it, her hair still damp from the shower.

"Mom....what's wrong?"

"The car...," said Diane, "in fifteen minutes. I'm taking you out to breakfast. I need to get out of here...and I want some company..."

It was almost twenty minutes later and Diane was letting her daughter drive....she'd only been driving a few months and could probably use the practice, and it was probably unfair to expect her to be able to drive well and talk about Max too. "There...that waffle shop....that'll do."

In a few moments the mother and daughter sat in the corner booth of a large and mostly empty restaurant, waiting for their orders, and the conversation Isabel Evans knew was coming finally took place.

"Isabel...you've always understood your brother better than I have...better than anybody... What in Hell is going on with that boy?"

"Uh.....what do you mean, Mom?" she asked, trying to sound like she really meant it. She knew exactly what her mother meant actually...why was Max so damn depressed. She just really didn't know how to tell her the truth...'because I destroyed the thing that made him feel....just a little bit...like he actually belonged on this planet,'

That really wasn't something Isabel could quite figure out how to say to her mother.

Diane glared at her daughter and Isabel winced internally. Her mother had never glared at her before, even when she'd deserved it.

"I mean four straight months of Counting Crows.....Four months of gloom and depression rollling off Max that has been so damn thick you could cut it with a knife...I mean four months of never seeing one damn smile on his face...never hearing him volunteer anything to me....Did you know he was in the Crashdown yesterday and someone SHOT A GUN off in the booth next to him and he FORGOT to even mention it to me....? I had to read in the goddamn paper, Isabel, that he and Michael were interviewed as witnesses by the police. He could have been killed, Isabel....and you know what...I don't think he even gives a damn. There are times I think he lays on that damn bed and prays for someone to just put him out of his misery..."

Isabel tried to take a drink of water....just to occupy herself while she tried to stall for time...tried to think of what to say...but her hands betrayed her...the glass shaking and sloshing water onto the tablecloth.

She had already been worried...that's why she had dreamwalked him...but now hearing this, and knowing from the dreamwalk just what demons were driving Max...and whose fault it was....
She had been able to take comfort in the arms of Alex in the dream orb...but here in the light of day...with her mother who never got upset herself being near tears...swearing...and Mom never swore...suddenly her own tears were coming down.

"I uh...I'm pretty sure it was a girl, Mom..."

"A girl? Well, I guess he is sixteen, that would make as much sense as anything, and he has always been so shy. If he developed a crush on some girl and she broke his heart, ...but it's been four months."

'Except it wasn't Liz who broke his heart, Isabel,' she told herself, 'it was YOU...you who drove them apart.'

And even knowing it wouldn't work...couldn't ever work. Even knowing that it was less painful for Max to just have his dreams than to cope with what would happen were Liz to really find out what he was .....at least that's what she had thought...until she'd felt the love Liz had for him in that dreamwalk, and even now it seemed so difficult to believe Liz might actually accept him as a friend if she really knew the whole story. But then Isabel knew she HAD to feel that way...had to believe that there was no hope for Max and Liz...any more than there was any hope for her and Alex.

'We're a different SPECIES, damn it!' she tried to tell herself. 'They'd never really accept us...not that way, even if we could perhaps be friends. it's just not possible. How could they possibly be willing to overlook that?'

She listened to her mother venting her frustration. She was worried about Max too...her mother also, for that matter. Isabel wasn't sure she'd ever heard her mother swear before. She had to be really freaked.

'Well,' thought Isabel to herself, '...it HAS to get better pretty soon. It's hard to think of how it could get much worse.'

[greywolf]

It was 8:15AM as she stepped into the shower...and the old fantasy started to replay itself in her mind...the fantasy she'd had shortly after her first day in Freshmen Girl's PE....the fantasy that she'd had dozens of times since then lying alone in her bed...or taking a shower...

• The warm water trickled over her breasts and ran down her body in the empty shower room next to the lockers...the school long since locked up and everyone gone home. Everyone but him....she could feel him out there...feel him like their souls were connected. As she lathered her body, she didn't even turn when she heard the footsteps behind her...she knew who it was, and as his hands encircled her waist and brought her slowly back against his own nude body, she simply sighed. Her head turned to her right and tilted back...and as she deepened the kiss with Max, she felt his right hand slide up to her left nipple and start to caress it, even as his left hand slid soapily downward and she opened her legs slightly...invitingly...the meaning clear....she was his...totally his...body and soul, and there was nothing she would deny him. She felt his fingertips caress her nub gently, the inner labia moistening and swellling with their own need for him......

Liz forced her mind out of the fantasy....the fantasy that she knew would never happen. There was too much pain there, and the morning had already been painful enough. Her parents had accepted her decision...oh they'd talked it over, discussed the pros and cons, but the decision had been hers, although they'd had some good suggestions. She would be done with this quarter in three weeks, and that would give her mother time to discuss it with her aunt...time to tie up loose ends for her own transfer.

Her parents, she knew, really didn't understand the reason she was doing this, but that was alright...it was a deception that did them no harm. Sure, she was embarassed that this had happened...that somehow she'd become just another of the unmarried pregnant teen girls who had made a disastrous mistake, but she'd still be a pregnant unmarried teen in Florida, only without the support of her parents and friends, and while the embarassment would be horrible, worse was the guilt about just how she'd gotten in this condition....and maybe even why.

She knew the reason she'd decided to have the child, however else she mght lie to herself. It was that the child was a part of Max, she'd finally decided, and that scared her somehow...frightened her that there may of been a method behind that madness that had taken her over six weeks ago.

She'd tried to view it dispassionately, but the more she had, the more terrified she'd gotten as she realized how much Max had meant to her all these years. Even in second grade, she'd been a pretty good student, but how much of how well she'd done academically...how much of what had made her 'the perfect Miss Parker,' had really been motivated by Max? How much had been so she could be up at the front of the room standing next to him when the prizes were given out for the spelling bees, the achievement awards in math and science? More, she believed, than she ever would have realized had this not happened...had events not somehow compelled an introspection that she'd never really done before.

And that realization had made her question the rest. She wasn't an idiot...she had excelled in science...and that included sex education. Could she really have forgotten somehow, as she'd started to live out her fantasy, that she'd been almost squarely in the middle of her fertile period? She wanted to believe that the alcohol...the passion aroused in her by the circumstances so similar to her fantasy...that all those things had led to that single stupid spontaneous act....but what if it hadn't? What if, unknowingly...or worse...far worse...knowingly she had actually trying to trap Max? To seduce him if she could...but if she couldn't do that, be willing to trap him by becoming pregnant with his child?

Liz wanted to believe that as horrible as what had happened was, that it had at least been the simple spontaneous mistake of an intoxicated fool, and no more than that...that even she couldn't have really been willing to use Max THAT way...that even taking advantage of his condition had just been about momentary pleasure....not about trying to trap him into a relationship that he'd indicated clearly he had no interest in... Surely not even a drunken Liz Parker could have done anything that reprehensible. But in a sense, it really didn't matter.

Whatever it was about Max that kept him away from her..and that she clearly did NOT understand,,,she thought she still at least knew enough about him...Mr. Responsibility. No, the main reason to flee to Florida was not the shame of seeing childhood friends and playmates pointing at her and giggling. Bad as that might be, she could have endured it. What she couldn't endure was having Max reminded every day about how she'd used him...and to see him being pulled against what was clearly his expressed will, into the sort of deeper relationship that co-parenting would mean. If she could have, she'd have aborted the baby...if only for Max's sake. But any time she'd thought of that option, all she could think about was a wide-eyed third grader getting off the bus...the innocence she saw in his eyes that day...how could she bring herself to destroy his child?

So the easy way out was for him to just never know. That, Liz understood, had been the real reason for this decision.

So she'd convinced her parents, and eaten her breakfast...another piece of dry toast...and instantly vomited it back up. But badly as she needed the shower, she couldn't allow herself to fantasize about Max anyl longer, for in that fantasy was nothing but pain...like being Moses and seeing a Promised Land that she'd never actually get to call her own...

Blinking the tears away, she started to shampoo her hair....

[greywolf]

He was just staring at the same blank space above his bed, listening to the music. He'd heard the car come back into the driveway, and figured that his mother and Isabel were back. It was difficult to care about that though...difficult to care about anything with the mess his life had become. He remembered her for the thousands time...grabbing her clothes up off the floor and scurrying away...tears streaming down her cheeks. He'd been too shocked...too disgusted with the knowledge of what he'd done to her to quickly follow...to say or do anything...although what could he have said...what could he have done...that could have made it better after he'd done something like that?

It took him a few seconds to recover...to really come to grips with the fact he'd actually.....violated .... her, and then he'd gone running after her. She was gone from the science room before he arrived...and probably just as well, he told himself. He hadn't waited to find his clothes before going to try to talk to her...try to comfort her...and most likely a naked alien running after her wouldn't have struck her as that comforting under the circumstances. He'd followed the trail of his clothes, dressing himself..before finally locking the building and going after her. He'd waited most of the night on the deck outside her window...not knowing exactly what he'd say...but hoping he could say something...but he'd given it up when it was obvious she wasn't coming home that night. He hadn't learned until later that she'd been in jail...but it was probably just as well. It had been six weeks and he still hadn't been able to think of the first sentence to say to her...'How do you apologize for something like...that?'

He heard the knock at the door, and ignored it...he didn't want company...and he'd locked the door. But any hope they might go away was lost when he heard the lock click open as the door knob turned and his sister's voice say, "I know you're in here, Max....we need to talk."

He sat on the side of his bed as she entered the room and closed the door, waving her hand over his CD player and using her powers to stop the music.

"Look Max, Mom's worried about you...so am I. This has been going on since Spring, and ....and I feel like it's my fault...Look Max, what I told you about Liz and that science program...well, I was wrong. I was afraid...afraid for myself and for Michael as well as for you...but I think I underestimated Liz. I...I dreamwalked Liz, Max. She was dreaming about the day after I talked to you...the day she told you she wanted to do more this past summer...more things together. The day you told her you couldn't because the two of you were...different.... I know I shouldn't have...she was your friend, and that conversation was private...but I wanted you to know how she felt about you...how much she cared about you...even when you told her you couldn't get any closer. I think I was wrong, Max....when I dreamwalked her and felt what she felt...she really cared for you. I don't think even if she somehow found out...that she'd do anything to hurt you. And I know how much it must have hurt you to tell her that. Max, maybe it would be OK...you know, just to be friends...."

Max looked out the window,,,his eyes staring blankly into the distance. "Maybe...," he said.

"Well, think about it anyway, OK?"

He nodded his head and Isabel left the room, still frowning. Max was hard to read, but she wasn't at all sure she'd gottent through to him.

Max let his mind drift back to that day.......

• “Max…”
  
  “Yes, Liz..?”
  
  “We’ve known each other now for seven years…and we’ve always been friends..”
  
  “Good friends, Liz..”
  
  “Good friends maybe, but not really…close…friends. This summer…I think I’d like it if we could hang out together sometimes..maybe go to the pool or lake together….just the two of us, not a whole big group.”
  
  The silence went on for an awkwardly long time. Finally he spoke...
  
  “I…uh…well, I don’t think that’d be a good idea, Liz.”
  
  “Why not, Max? Other boys and girls go out. Why couldn’t we?”
  
  “I, uh…..Liz, I value your friendship,…more than you’ll ever know, but….well, we are just too different to make a good couple…”
  
  “Ok, Max…,”

Max didn't need Isabel to tell him that Liz had loved him that day....when he'd looked in her eyes the connection had formed...unbidden...and he'd found himself peering in to her soul. She had loved him, at least back then... And even if he hadn't been an alien, he thought he would have still known that. Liz was shy...as shy as he was. He knew what it must have cost her to lay herself out to him....and even had he not felt her pain through the connection, he would have seen in the tears in her eyes the pain he'd caused when he'd said they could never be a couple. Her pain echoed his own, and he hadn't turned her away because he hadn't loved her...but because he had.

He'd seen it in the connection...this wasn't about a few summer dates. Liz wanted forever. Throughout his entire life Max had felt like Pinnochio....but never in his life had he wanted to be human more than he had at that moment. But he wasn't human..and there was nothing he could do about it. Liz had wanted forever....forever with a person who could give her a home and a family and children and a life of joy....and Max knew he wasn't that one. Izzy had been right when she'd said the words...
"You and she are a different species, Max. If you truly care for her...you've got to step back. You've got to let her go...to her own kind, where she can find happiness, Max. Anything else would just be cruel."

And while Max knew he would have given anything...anything at all, to be that one for her, he was a different species. He couldn't give her what they wanted, hell, he hadn't even thought they were physically compatible.....

His guts churned with pain and nausea as he remembered just how physically compatible they'd proved to be. He still remembered the start of it only vaguely...an intoxicated Liz coming to the door...he knew she'd been trying to distance herself from him the whole summer and he'd gone along with it...going out of his way to avoid her, just as she'd tried to avoid him. It had been better for both of them he'd thought. But suddenly she was there...and she obviously hadn't been any happier for the time they'd spent apart. Max remembered arguing about that...and he guessed he'd started drinking as well. Afterwards...he couldn't blame the alcohol for what happened...certainly no one had forced him to drink it...forced him to take advantage of an intoxicated and defenseless Liz Parker.

'And God help me, I could have stopped it..'

No, he knew he wasn't really aware of when it started...when he had...assaulted...

'The word is RAPE, Max. God, ...you can at least be honest with yourself, if no one else. It isn't like you slapped her across the face or something..you violated her when she was helpless and couldn't resist...'

But what worried him most was that he rememberered the last....it was almost as if when he'd entered her....'When you RAPED her, Max..' ....it was almost like the very act of entering her had started to sober him up.

He remembered the thrusts...his mind clearing more with each one....He'd known at the last...known the horrible thing he was doing to her...and he wanted to believe that his mind had still been too befuddled by the drink...not that that was an excuse...but he honestly wasn't sure about the last thrust...when he'd exploded inside of her...could he have stopped that?

Would he have stopped that, had he known?... Physical compatibility? He'd known pleasure like he'd never known...never believed possible...and the memory of that pleasure was like acid eating at his soul as he remembered her face...her tears...what he had done to her to obtain that pleasure for himself. He wanted to believe...wanted so desperately to believe...that it was too late to stop by the time he realized what he was doing...but he wasn't sure. Yes, he'd raped her, and drunk or not, there was no excuse for it, but if he could have only spared her that....if he could have only somehow NOT derived so much pleasure from their physical compatibility...if she had somehow been spared the memory of him exploding inside her...seeing his face flushed with pleasure while he defiled her...

'But that's what happened, Max...and you can't go back and change it. Nothing will ever change it..."

He still didn't know why she hadn't reported him...maybe she was too ashamed...Maybe she was too scared...maybe she even still loved him...he didn't know. But he did know he'd done something unspeakably cruel...unspeakably evil...and he didn't blame her for avoiding him. He was avoiding her too...it was the least he could do for someone that....if fate had been kinder...could have been his soulmate.

He lay back in his bed and turned the CD player volume even higher as he stared at the ceiling.

'Thanks, Iz....for pulling THAT scab off...'

[greywolf]

As the two girls got into the Jetta, Nancy and Jeff watched with mixed emotions. Maria had been Liz's best friend since Kindergarten, and it was only natural, they supposed, that she wanted to break the news to Maria of her imminent departure to Florida. The girls usually had sleepovers every couple weeks during the summer, and almost that frequently during the winter, but that hadn't happened since whatever had disturbed Liz so much last Spring.

In a sense, this too was a return to normalcy on Liz's part...an indication that she was starting to make an emotional recovery from whatever had disturbed her so greatly all summer and, they were sure, contributed greatly to the mess she now found herself in.

Also, in a sense, they trusted Maria...she'd almost been like their own daughter all these years... and secretly Jeff knew that he was hoping she'd share the secret with Maria...the secret she had adamantly refused to share with her parents..as to who the father was of her unborn child.

Jeff and Nancy had meant what they said about allowing their daughter to make her own adult decisions, but between themselves they still believed she was making a mistake in not even telling the boy. They'd listened to Liz's reasons...that the responsibility was hers, not his, and that she didn't want the boy to feel compelled to be part of this...both of her parents had felt it was a little late for that thought...but Liz hadn't been willing to budge an inch, and they were going to abide by their agreement not to try to compell her however difficult it might be. But Maria was another story.

They'd watched Maria grow up without a father, after her father ran off on Amy when Maria was still in first grade, and both of them...but particularly Jeff...had sensed how much the loss had meant to her, because in many respects he had become the father figure in Maria's life. If anyone could make that loss clear to Liz it was Maria, and even if she couldn't...if she could just get the information out of Liz...Maria was notoriously bad at keeping secrets. If they could work on her after Liz was down in Florida there was a pretty good chance they could find out, and once he found out, Jeff Parker fully intended to have a man to man talk with that boy.

While he didn't see how he could ever agree with Liz that the boy was somehow blameless in all this, it takes two to tango after all, he wasn't going to fight her over it...and he was going to do his best not to be angry with the boy. But Jeff and Nancy both believed that from a fundamental issue of fairness, the boy ought to at least be informed that he was about to become a father, irrespective of whether or not he really intended to accept the role of one.

So it was with mixed emotions that the two parents watched their daughter and Maria drive away in the Jetta...northwest toward the old homestead.


When Liz had told the tourists that her family had been in New Mexico for four generations, she hadn't been exactly accurate. Her family had been in Roswell for four generations, beginning with her great grandfather in 1914. Her family had been in the state of New Mexico...or really, the territory of New Mexico. for even longer.

Two generations before the family had moved to Roswell, her great-great-great grandfather had homesteaded a quarter section (160 acres) almost a two hour drive northwest of Roswell, almost to Lincoln County, where Billy the Kid had once roamed.

The passage of the Homestead Act by Congress in 1862 was the culmination of more than 70 years of controversy over the disposition of public lands. From the inception of the United States there was a clamor for ever-increasing liberalism in the disposition of these public lands. From 1830 onward, groups called for free distribution of public lands in the west. The platform of the Free-Soil party, which saw such distribution as a means of stopping the spread of slavery into the territories, was subsequently adopted by the Republican party in its 1860 platform. The Southern states had been the most vociferous opponents of the policy, and their secession cleared the way for its adoption.

Taking advantage of the Homestead Act, Liz's distant ancestor, Zebediah Parker and his wife Martha had come to the Territory from St. Louis Missouri, to seek their fortunes, and they had homesteaded in the rugged cattle country in the northwest corner of Chaves county. It hadn't been an easy life, and Martha died in childbirth, leaving Zebediah with two sons. The area was marginal for cattle raising, but Zebediah and the two boys had made the ranch into a modest success, using the open range of federal lands on two sides for grazing. They had also discovered an area on the ranch with a small seam of silver, and were briefly prosperous until the seam played out, building a for the era, fine ranch house, barn, stables, and a bunkhouse. But Sam, the oldest son, was killed in one of the range wars that swept through the area, as users fought for the limited federal land available for grazing cattle, and Zebediah himself died of smallpox. Andrew, the youngest son, married a girl from Lincoln county and had one son and a daughter of his own, before his own wife died of a ruptured appendix. The daughter died in the great influenza pandemic of 1918 along with about 100 million other people. The son had been Liz's great-great-grandfather, who had gone off to fight in the Great War in Europe...and never really come back. That happened to a lot of the doughboys...kids from the hinterland of the United States who...like the song says, couldn't be kept on the farm after they'd seen Paree'....not that anyone would ever confuse Roswell with Paris.

Still, Roswell in the early 1920s had at least had electricity and a railroad line....the old homestead had neither. Electricity had come to the area in the 1950s, after WWII...the OTHER great war...and what was left of the old homestead now had electricity and even an electric water pump that allowed for a flush toilet and shower in the old bunkhouse, which was just about all that was left of the homestead buildings after a grass fire in the 1930s had gutted the ranchouse and the barn.

The 160 acres still belonged to the Parkers...and always would as long as there was a descendant of old Zebediah, since he'd tied it up in some sort of a trust that meant it couldn't be sold as long as there was any descendant left. Jeff Parker was the only child of his generation, so right now he was the only trustee and someday it would be Liz, and then her children. The whole ranch wasn't really wasn't worth much...even if they had been able to sell it, but they leased the pastureland to the Anderson Ranch to the north, and that covered taxes for the whole homestead with a few hundred dollars left over for the electric bills so it really cost them nothing, but it was a great place to get away from the world, and the Parker's had often gone up to the old bunkhouse on weekends when Liz and Maria were younger.

Jeff and Nancy could understand that it might be the perfect place for Liz to share her news with her best friend and hopefully Maria would get the whole story...and spill the beans once Liz was off to Florida.

The old bunk house hadn't changed much, and the girls quickly unloaded their sleeping bags and food....Macaroni and cheese for tonight, with Martian Blast Sundae makings for dessert.

Maria had noticed a number of meaningful glances between Liz and her parents as they'd packed, and the conversation on the trip up had been...well, all Maria...even moreso than usual. So when they were finally unpacked and just the two of them for miles around, the question was finally asked.

"OK, Liz...what's going on? Why are we really up here?"

"Maria...we've been friends for a long time and I wanted you to know...I'm going to be moving to Florida for a year or so..."

"Florida...your parents are moving to Florida?"

"No Maria...not them..just me...well..not just me either..."

""But...why Liz?"

"Because I'm....pregnant."

[greywolf]

"You are...WHAT?" asked Maria, sitting down suddenly on one of the bunks, her eyes locked on those of her friend.

"I am...pregnant."

"Pregnant as in with child? Carrying a baby? Or pregnant as in some SAT oddball definition I don't know anything about?"

"Pregnant as in I have a six week fetus in me, Ria. That's why I'm going to Florida, so I can have the baby there, and nobody in Roswell will know. That's why I have to leave."

"Six weeks? The hazing thing...is Kyle...?"

"NO, Maria, it wasn't Kyle. But please don't ask who the father is. I don't think I can really explain that part...not to anyone."

"Omigawd Liz, you were raped....," said Maria. For all it was a question, it sounded like a statement. Liz blushed as she shook her head.

"No Ria,...I wasn't raped. What I was was drunk but not THAT drunk. I knew what I was doing...I just sort of got...carried away."

"Max Evans had sex with you while you were drunk? He took advantage of you....I'll kill him, that's what I'll do..."

Liz looked up in alarm...and the words were out of her mouth before she thought..."It wasn't Max's fault...he didn't intend for this to happen."

"Well no shit, Sherlock...I guess you didn't intend for it to happen either, but if he had sex with you while you were drunk, it's almost as bad as rape...the least the bastard could have done was use protection, but he didn't even do that..."

"Ria...you don't understand...he was drugged."

"Max takes drugs? Mr. Responsibility, is a friggin druggee? And you think that excuses him? The son of a bitch gets strung out and attacks you when you can't defend yourself, and you don't think he's at fault...?" asked Maria, standing up and walking over to within inches of Liz.

"I didn't say he TOOK drugs...I said he WAS drugged. It wasn't anything he planned."

"Well who the HELL gave him the drugs?"

Liz buried her face in her hands before replying. "Well, I guess I did, ...not to put too fine a point on it..."

Maria sat down abruptly on the floor of the bunkhouse, "Liz....I really think you ought to start over...from the very beginning... and tell me the WHOLE story."

At this point Liz couldn't figure any good way to avoid telling Maria the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She was already in too deep.

"I'll tell you the whole story, Ria...and I'll tell you the truth, but two conditions...you can't tell anyone...not about Max...not about anything, unless I give you my permission..."

"OK, on that Liz...and the second condition?"

"You have to tell me how you figured out it was Max..."

"Well that's easy enough. You said you weren't raped, and that you sort of knew what you were doing. That only left Max. I've been your friend for most of your life, and it's been pretty obvious that you've been gaa-gaa over the boy since third grade....and Max has been equally gaa-gaa over you."

"Well the first, maybe, but Max liking me...that just is so not so, Ria."

"Don't give me that crap, Liz. Oh, I know you probably don't think it's crap, but it is...Alex and I talked about it way back in seventh grade. You weren't letting Max know that you were gaa-gaa over him, he wasn't letting you know he was gaa-gaa over you...we figured by graduation the only two kids in the class who wouldn't know would be the class Valedictorian and the class Salutatorian.......the two brightest kids in the class, and neither one would realize the other was crazy about them. "

"Ria, that's just not true. At the end of last year I did tell Max...I told him I'd kind of like to start going places with just the two of us...dates sort of."

"You finally actually got over your shyness? That's amazing...I take it he said no."

"He said we were too different..."

"Liz...you never try to force commitment from a guy. Take ....take Michael Guerin. I kind of like him...even with the freaky hair. But do I tell him that? No. I give him a hard time, he gives me a hard time right back. Eventually when he's sure I'm not interested I'll become a challenge....and then I'll reel him in. But if I went up to him and said, 'Michael...let's be a couple'...hell, he'd probably go hide in some cave in the woods. So what did Max say?"

"He said we were too....different."

"Different......right...like you have a 4.00 grade point average and are going to get 1599 on your SATS, he's got a 3.999 and is going to get a 1600. The two of you couldn't be any more similar and still be legal going together in the State of New Mexico."

"But that's just it, Ria, we AREN'T going together...we never have."

"Well, I'd say what you did six weeks ago probably has moved your relationship one giant leap along that path, Liz. Besides, Max has always wanted to go with you..hell, anyone could tell that. It's just that frosty bitch sister of his. She hazes the guy like a border collie hazes sheep anytime she sees him looking at you....she always has."

Liz's head shook slowly as she looked off into the distance, remembering that painful rejection. "I don't think so, Ria. It was just him and me, and he made it pretty clear...he really didn't want a real relationship."

"So that was why you.....drugged him and took advantage of him?" said Maria, her face showing disbelief. "Well, might as well tell me the rest of the story....this one I gotta hear."

Maria listened in silence as Liz told her about the events at the house, although her eyes got wide and her lips drew back from her teeth in anger as Liz described her altercation with Bubba in the master bedroom. She never had liked that big pig. Maria shook her head silently as Liz described her attempt to convince an already pretty well intoxicated Kyle Valenti to leave...only to have him reject her. 'Sure, Kyle could hack it....damn near died, was all.' Of course, Maria realized she still hadn't forgiven Kyle for taking Liz to the party to begin with. Her and Kyle had already had words about that.....

"So I guess I wasn't thinking very well,"said Liz, "...in retrospect, I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking very well. Anyway I thought if I could just give him a number...let him understand how damn much alcohol there was in those bottles, so I took the extra bottle from the kitchen and went to the school. I was pretty sure that Max would be working late, and all I really needed was about fifteen minutes with the spectrophotometer...just enough to find out how much alcohol was in it. I didn't realize about the drugs then..., but I was too drunk to make the pipette bulb work...too drunk to even get the pipette itself to work. Max took it from me and started to pipette himself....that's when I told him I'd been drinking."

"But how did that get him drugged?"

"Well, his eyes looked up at me and the tip of the pipette broke the surface of the sample...he sucked a pipette full in..."

"But Liz, that couldn't have even been an ounce..."

"Less than that...twenty-five milliliters....about five/sixths an ounce."

"But that's like less than a shot. Even with 80 proof whiskey, that wouldn't have made Max drunk. What kind of drugs were in that stuff?"

"I don't know...I couldn't analyze for that....not without knowing what it was to begin with at least, and maybe not even then. And it turned out to be 52%....that's 104 proof. But he got more than that."

"More? How?"

"Well..., I really don't want to talk about it...."

"Out with it, Liz.....tell Aunt Ria, otherwise I swear to God I'll ask Max..."

"No...you can't do that...he can't know..."

"I don't see how he can't already know, given what you've told me. It just doesn't seem like a shot glass of that was enough, even if it was stronger than whiskey...though I guess maybe if it had drugs in it...."

"We had another fight....he started bossing me.....like he owned me or something.....telling me that I shouldn't be drinking and driving..."

"Oh, I can see why you'd be upset by that...him thinking that you couldn't handle a MERE 0.18 blood alcohol....just because you don't normally drink at all. Stupid old Max, bossing you around...trying to interfere with your inalienable right to wrap yourself around some lamp post somewhere," Maria said in her most sarcastic voice.

"OK, so I was drunk and not thinking straight...I admit it, I'm not making any excuses for drinking...or even for what happened afterward. It WAS all my fault. What happened is that we got into another argument... I was mad at him still about rejecting me...told him he had his opportunity to someone important in my life...or something like that anyway...but somewhere in the argument I wound up hitting him in the face with the whole liter of stuff....I'm not sure how much he swallowed, or what kind of drugs were in it...but he got giddy...started to get incoherent. He said he was getting hot...that he was on fire...and he wandered off. I thought at first he was faking it, but he wasn't. It was like his eyes were rolled back in his head, and he was out on his feet. I followed himj...by the trail of clothes he was dropping, and found him naked in the boys shower room...in an icy shower shivering like he had hypothermia. I got him out of the shower, toweled him off and he collapsed shivering and almost unconscious on the mat of the tumbling room and....I guess, in retrospect, I probably should have gone back and got in the cold shower myself...but that's not what I did."

"What DID you do, Liz..."

"What I did was rationalize to myself that he was cold and I ought to warm him up. I still wonder if even then I didn't do it on purpose. I've had this fantasy about Max for over a year....me being in the shower and him coming up behind me...naked...caressing me....in the dream his body was just awesome...and when I saw what he really looked like naked..."

"Couldn't compare with the fantasy?"

"No...better...lot's better. I tried to tell myself it was just first aid...shared body warmth, as I held him in my arms...caressed him, but even though he was still out of it, ...uh...his body knew better...and so did mine, I guess. God, Maria, I just USED him...his eyes were open but there was nobody home...not until...not until afterwards...and then.....then...Lord, Maria, the contempt...the horror I saw in his eyes when he looked at me...I don't think at first he really believed what I'd done, but when he did...I just grabbed my clothes and ran...back to the lab room."

"You didn't even talk to him afterwards?"

"I was going to ...once I was dressed...once I was more under control....but I saw the reading on the spectrophotometer...52% alcohol....I knew a liter of it would kill Kyle...so I ran out the door...got in the Mustang...got back to the party and somehow got Kyle out..."

"but after that.....?"

"I was in JAIL, Maria. They don't allow drunks to have visitors in the drunk tank, but I remembered the look on his face...all that long night. By morning after my parents got me out....even if I hadn't been grounded, I could have never looked him in the eyes again after that."

"You haven't talked to Max at all since that night? He doesn't even know about the baby?"

"How could I, Maria. He made it plain...he didn't want to be part of my life," Liz said, the tears falling down her cheeks, "...and I still don't know...I still wonder if I didn't do this on purpose...to trap him into being my boyfriend by having sex with him....God, Maria, how could I not have remembered it was right in my fertile period...even being drunk I should have remembered that. I have been so unfair to him....not taking no for an answer...taking advantage of him....I can't let him be trapped into a relationship with me just because I did something stupid...something he hates me for."

"Liz, I don't believe that...I don't believe that Max hates you for giving him your virginity...that's just....I can't see that. You need to talk to him, Liz. He needs to know about the baby...it's his too."

"No, Ria, he can't ever know...."

"Liz, you need to think this through. Unless you have an abortion, he's going to know. When you come back from Florida with a baby do you really believe he's going to think it's someone else's when he knows he had sex with you that night?"

"It won't be my baby, Maria."

"You're giving it up for adoption?"

"No...I...I couldn't do that, any more than I could have an abortion. But my parents have always wanted another child...I'm going to tell everyone I'm going to an International Baccaulareate Spanish program in Florida and stay with my aunt for a year...and I will, too. As soon as I leave my folks are going to start telling people that they are lonely with no kid in the house, and that since they haven't been able to have any more, they are going to adopt a kid. Since the Soviet Union came apart, there are all sorts of adoption agencies over there that adopt to Americans. When I give birth they can say they are flying off to adopt a kid from Czechoslovakia or something, and bring the baby home. Three months later, after I lose weight and get back to normal, I come home and have a new brother or sister. My folks have agreed to help raise the baby until I go off to college...then I'll take the baby away from Roswell."

"God, Liz, a single mom....that'll be so hard..." '...and not particularly great for the baby, either,' Maria thought, remembering how painful it had been for her to grow up without a father.

"I know, but we'll make it somehow. I know I'm crazy...the nurse at the clinic thinks I should abort...or give it up for adoption, but Ria...I couldn't. 'It's all of Max I'll ever have...'

"Liz...we're best friends and I'll do anything for you...and I want to come to Florida to be there with you when it's time....but I still think you are making a big mistake in not telling Max."

"Maybe, Maria. But you didn't see his face when he realized what I did....I can't face that, Maria...I just can't."

Maria sat on the bed, letting Liz cry on her shoulder for over an hour. She still thought Liz was making a mistake, but she had three more weeks to try to talk some sense in to her. Right now Liz needed her support, and that was all that mattered.